I’m not belittling anyone’s annoyance but just to play devil’s advocate: My baby’s cord really didn’t pulse for that long after she was born. They didn’t cut it anyway to be sure but it was a shorter pulse time than any of my other kids. Maybe this nurse had seen a lot like that, or was just trying to understand the mom’s position which is a good thing.

Or maybe she said it in a snappy tone while looking down her nose at the mother and holding a clamp in her hand.

I guess he might have had visions of lotus birthing in his mind, lol. But I doubt it.

I wonder if the size of the cord has anything to do with the length of time it pulses. My older daughter’s took a while, her cord was pretty skinny. My younger daughter, I swear it was probably less than two minutes (although I wasn’t exactly timing), and her cord was HUGE. I’d bet it was an inch diameter. I’m not kidding, it shocked me when I saw it.

This one is also mine (same poster from previous entry). I intend to bring her evidence and research studies that prove her wrong- and again, demand she not touch me or my child until *I* say it’s OK. My first, I’m not sure how long the MW waited; it wasn’t long, and I was too caught up in the rush that I wasn’t paying attention to stop her. With my son, though, my placenta *did* detach fairly quickly and the cord stopped pulsing withing 5-7 minutes. I also know my first placenta detached rather quickly. So more than likely, we’re not talking 30 minutes here (and I told her as much), but damn it, my kid will NOT be losing 30% of his blood volume before he’s even been alive a minute. I’m going to laugh in her face if she tries to make me lie on my back when I’m pushing, as well.

i have no idea how long my sons took to stop but we cut it at about 15 minutes, placenta wasnt yet delivered but we decided it was just in the way of my being comfortable holding my baby at the breast at that point. i think 15 minutes is pretty normal, most less some longer i would think, hardly a long time in the grand scheme of things. and at the end of the day the studies have shown that even one minute after birth at least half of the blood has been passed back to the baby, by 5 minutes you could safely clamp with out compromising the purpose of delayed clamping. in cases where it is important to cut sooner than later (who knows why since all reasons that come immediately to mind, except for maternal hemorrhage/death, the baby would benefit from the prolonged oxygen supply) then whats 2 minutes going to matter? “sigh” dont you just love doctors who have no logic…

I can’t wait for the day to arrive when we don’t have to inform OBs that we’d like “DELAYED cord clamping,” but instead that we’d prefer no “PREMATURE cord clamping” (unless medically warranted, of course), since by then what we now call delayed cord clamping will be the norm. (We can dream, can’t we?)

I have no idea how long my daughter’s cord pulsed because I wasn’t paying attention, but it wasn’t clamped or cut until *after* her placenta was delivered…22 minutes after her birth. I was still sitting in the water, holding her on my chest, and the midwife leaned over the edge of the pool to catch the placenta in a bowl, then kept hold on it close to us while the other midwife clamped and my husband cut. *Then* they helped us move to the bed! Awesome.